The Best Terrible Weed Puns Mainstream Media Has To Offer

Get ‘em while they’re pot.

Naturally, you would expect "weed media" to go through some growing pains (like most new media/Internet content platforms and publications) as the industry goes from illegal and underground to mainstream. As major media outlets become more comfortable writing about the herb–––or, maybe if they were to consume it themselves––perhaps they'll abandon the crutches of half-assed punnery. But until then, we get to bask in the awkward glory of it all—the cringeworthy, the pitiful, and the just plain corny. Appreciate, or scoff at, these pitiful marijuana puns before they’re a thing of the past.

“Yes, We Cannabis”

To top off what’s otherwise a well-informed article, Slate’s headline, “Yes We Cannabis,” is a bad dad joke of epic proportions. What’s worse? They’re not even the first ones to use it. Ouch.

“Reefer Gladness”

The New York Times, despite being one of the most highly-esteemed newspapers worldwide, is a repeat offender of this eye-rollingly bad pun. They have not one, not two, but three articles all trying to make “reefer gladness” happen. Spoiler Alert: It’s never going to happen.

“Budding Economy”

Oh CNN, did someone neglect to tell you adding "budding" to anything does not make it a weed joke? The first line of this story really says it all: “If you think 2013 will be a half-baked year for tourism in Seattle, you haven't been paying attention to the curiously pungent smoke signals emanating from this city.” Pure poetry.

“Up In Smoke”

For some reason, people still consider themselves geniuses when they come up with this one. As recently as August 8, 2017, a Fox News reporter thought they’d invented it. Though that’s not the only tragedy going on with the headline, “Sessions promises of pot crackdown up in smoke.”What’s your beef with possessive quotation marks, Fox? It’s enough to make a punctuation nerd SCREAM!

“HighPO”

This last example of shitty weed puns is the kind of lingual stretch that makes you think someone must have been smoking weed while writing it. A recent TechCrunch article about High Times magazine going public––which, is admittedly pretty big news––begins with: “IPO? How about HighPO?”